Samsung Unwraps 950 Pro M.2 NVMe Solid State Drives

It was not that long ago that Samsung created a stir with its SM951 SSD thanks to its M.2 form-factor, reported NVMe support, and PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. Yet, it soon became clear it was an OEM drive, with no direct consumer warranty or purchase options available except through OEM suppliers. If that wasn’t bad enough, some OEM models did not even include NVMe capability.

All that is now history as Samsung is announcing the 950 Pro SSD, in the same M.2 form-factor with PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and NVMe support. Oh, and it’s a consumer drive, so it comes with a five-year warranty. The 950 Pro carries similar performance ratings as the SM951; the primary difference is the 950 Pro will be introducing Samsung’s third generation V-NAND, 32-layer 128Gbit MLC flash.

The days of SATA may be at an end. Intel has shifted its flagship consumer SSD to a PCIe slot offering and the 950 Pro marks Samsung’s transition of its own flagship SSD to the M.2 PCIe form-factor. The reason SATA Express is not seeing wide adoption is likely because it is limited to only a PCIe x2 (2GB/s), which would already bottleneck many M.2 drives such as the 950 Pro. The M.2 interface is capped at PCIe 3.0 x4, giving it almost 4GB/s of bandwidth to work with, nevermind the more friendly laptop form-factor.

Consumers eager for an upgrade will be able to purchase the 950 Pro drives in October. Unfortunately, anyone hoping for larger capacity drives will have to wait until next year for the 1TB 950 Pro, or fall back on the SATA-based 850 Pro offerings. Samsung is also planning to introduce another 850 Pro model with a whopping 4TB capacity by next year. No word yet as to pricing on any of these drives.